April 28, 2011

Discovering another world through the kindness of a friend

Share this article:

LIZZIE WITH SUSAN BALLER-SHEPARD

WE ARE PLEASED, this week, to welcome Susan Baller-Shepard to FriendshipAndFaith—our ongoing effort to promote cross-cultural friendship. One year ago, we kicked off this global effort by publishing our own stories in book form (look in the right margin for links to the book and to our WISDOM network). Then, we invited women far and wide to share their stories—and many have. Susan is a Presbyterian minister, an award-winning writer, a Mom—and a friend. (There’s more about her life with links to her website at the end of today’s story.)

FRIENDS WITH FANBy the Rev. Susan Baller-Shepard

A dentist friend of mine tells me he has a patient, new to the United States, working on her English, from Beijing with sons the same ages as my sons, would I like to meet her?

The answer in my head is: Do I have time for this? I have a newly adopted daughter Lizzie from China, two active boys, and I feel overwhelmed as it is.

Instead, I say: “Sure! Why not?”

That’s how my friendship with Fan started, simply enough, eight years ago. We arranged a dinner party to have everyone get together: the dentist’s family, our family, Fan’s family. What is striking about Fan at first is her appearance. She has long black hair, beautiful eyes, a slender figure, and energy that makes her look like a teenager. As I grew to know Fan better, to know her kindness and generosity of spirit, she became a sort of archetypal woman for me—how I’d picture Lizzie’s birth mother, as a woman of grace and beauty.

FAN AND LIZZIEOne day, I had Fan out for coffee. She had recently traveled to Beijing, and had purchased adorable clothes for Lizzie. She explained, “With sons, I never get to shop for girl things.” She gave Lizzie quilted baby clothes, like you see on most babies in China. In the stillness of an afternoon with the boys at school, and Lizzie playing and napping, Fan and I talked. Fan was latching onto the English language incredibly fast. Through that first year I knew her, she was flying through English. She would apologize for her lack of language, not realizing her own mastery of it.

We talked about China. I asked her questions about her life, growing up in Beijing, about what she missed (her friends, family, and food), about what she enjoyed here (opportunities for her sons). I asked Fan to speculate about who she thought my daughter’s birth mother could be, what her life would have been like, what her birth mother would have thought about having a daughter?

Fan looked at me at one point and said, “You see all of this with Western eyes.”

It was a huge relief, that conversation. I was trying to get my head around the grief of Lizzie’s birth mother, the grief of those circumstances, and Fan gave me permission to not understand it all, to leave it open to mystery and differences of culture. I was feeling so raw in those days, trying to understand the magnitude of our adoption, the deep love I had for our daughter, the intensity of what was left behind in China. I was very aware that we had left behind a big piece of our daughter’s history in Yangjiang, China, a “small” coastal city of 2 million people, looking out onto the South China Sea.

I see Fan at our local Chinese New Year celebrations, at parties, and more often than not, at our bank, where she works. Fan’s friendship has been a bridge for me, connecting me in a real way to Lizzie’s motherland. Fan and Lizzie share a commonality I do not, they are both Chinese-born females living out their lives in America.

I am grateful for Fan’s friendship, more than she knows. When I tell her I’ve been reading Li Bai and Du Fu, ancient Chinese poets, she gives me books of modern Chinese poets. She tells me the ones she knows, the ones she grew up learning about, the ones she likes. In the collection of Bo Yang poetry she gave me, is a stanza from the poem “What Year What Month” that refers to the holiday Chong Yang, traditionally a time for family reunions:

What makes it so hard is it’s Chong Yang againI lie listening as mountain echoes reach the grassy terraceFloating and dancing, their dreaming spirits have all arrivedOnce every day I can’t help but wonder

Like Bo Yang, “Once every day I can’t help but wonder,” about my great fortune—this gift of being my daughter’s mother in this lifetime. I pray for the “dreaming spirits” of her ancestors, giving thanks for the lives they lived, that lead up to Lizzie being all she is. And now, this added gift of knowing Fan? It’s learning about mooncakes, learning the sweetness of another world, and finding all that in a friend.

The Rev. Susan Baller-Shepard, MSW, has written for many publications, including the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post “On Faith,” Spirituality & Health, Writer’s Digest, and Church & Society. Susan is a parish associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church-Normal, and for twelve years has been editor of an international spirituality web site www.spiritualbookclub.com with its blog of over 125 interviews. Author of the children’s book Matching Yu, Susan lives in Bloomington, Illinois, with her husband and three children.

Please help us with Friendship and Faith!

As readers, we welcome you to contribute your own stories of cross-cultural friendship. (NOTE: There are helpful tips under “We’d like to publish your story”)

You can help in many ways! Purchase our book “Friendship and Faith,” which is packed with dozens of stories by women about their real-life experiences with cross-cultural friendships. Bookmark this page—or subscribe via the link in upper right. If you’re on Facebook, please click the “Recommend” button below to share this story with friends.

The annual observance of Lent, the season of spiritual reflection leading to Easter, is growing across the U.S. Around the world, 2 billion men and women mark Lent as a part of the Christian calendar, but most do not pause on a daily basis to enjoy Lent’s rich opportunity to reflect on the life of […]

Wisdom Gleaned From Life’s Daily Journey Popular author and counselor Benjamin Pratt helps men and women rediscover hope and purpose in their lives through his writing, teaching and public appearances. Now for the first time in book form, Benjamin Pratt collects dozens of columns that readers keep talking about as he travels and meets with […]

Read more about how A Letter and Ken Wilson’s “Third Way” are part of a nationwide movement! “This is a breakthrough work coming from the heart of evangelical Christianity and offered into the heart of evangelical Christianity,” writes David P. Gushee, the prolific Christian author and Director of the Center for Theology and Public Life […]

Second edition, with 2014 Reformation Project speech now available! HEADLINE NEWS! This historic book is touching lives nationwide. You’ll find the most important news stories right here. In Changing Our Mind, David P. Gushee invites readers along his journey as he changes his mind about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender inclusion in the Church. As […]

Twenty years into a successful career as a pastor in the United Methodist Church, Laurie Haller was burned out. In Laurie’s words, she was discouraged, bored, hopeless, depressed, beyond exhaustion, cynical, despairing, and numb. She had lost all sense of balance between her career, her family, and herself. Then, she was awarded a Lilly Endowment […]

‘We’ve never seen a book launch like this!’ That’s the headline news from the launch of This Far by Faith, an inspiring book of true stories by Faith Fowler, the Detroit pastor you may have read about in The Wall Street Journal and other national newspapers. In her book, Faith shares dozens of inspiring true […]

Friendship and Faith is a book about making friends, which may be the most important thing you can do to make the world a better place–and transform your own life in the process. Making a new friend often is tricky, as you’ll discover in these dozens of real-life stories by women from a wide variety […]